I'm sure many of you saw the Greenwood post that nearly brought down facebook servers yesterday. I'd like to address some of these issues and possibly formulate some solutions. For those that didn't see it, the post was an innocent observation about the attendance at the Iowa City tournament this last weekend. What ensued was a lot of PDGA bashing and random thoughts about certain issues related to tournaments.

The two main issues I'm going to address is the total number of tournaments and the divisions within these tournaments. It's likely true that there are too many tournaments, however it's going to be very difficult to tell someone they cannot host a tournament. This really comes down to free market vs socialism. I can come up with the greatest solution in the world, but I don't feel like I have the right to infringe on someone's business even if it's for the greater good. The greater good with any subject is always going to be controversial because it will be bad for certain individuals even if it's better for the sport or a tournament on the whole.

Which leads me to divisions... I think we could solve a lot of problems by consolidating divisions. The obvious one is Open vs Masters, but this issue trickles all the way down. My solution would be to have 2-3 divisons for most tournaments (Pro, Am, and maybe rec). Then offer more protected division with a minimum of 10 players instead of 3. To move forward people are going to have to lose the mindset of labeling 20 different levels of players whether it be age, gender, or ability. I'm all for women playing with other women, however I think playing the sport comes first and then playing with like players comes second.

I have a lot more to say, but I'm gonna let this thread develop for a little bit and address people's views as they pop up. Fire away!

What about capping the amount of events a state can host based on the states population of registered players? This one is kind of a double edged sword because it may limit the amount of money the PDGA will receive from tournament registrations, but it might see an increase in revenue based on new player registrations and/or renewals of existing players.

Also, what about capping the amount of events a region can host? Does a city/region really need to host more than 3-4 tournaments a year? If you remove the vendor piece of the puzzle then the answer is no in my opinion.

I think that the idea of consolidating divisions also has merit. I could easily see consolidating the Int\Adv into a single division as well as possibly merging the Pro Masters division into the Pro division. The pro masters division would bring a little more luster back to the Open division for most of the c-tiers around Iowa(Not sure how this would play outside of Iowa though). It might be short sighted in that aspect.

I started playing in 1996 and didn't play my first tourney till Fall 2010. My rating went from 870-958 in three short seasons. The only way that was possible was to play 25-30 tournies a season. And the only way that was possible was by having a tourney or 2 within 2 hours of my house every weekend. For someone like me, the "saturation" was the competitive catch up I needed, and the only way I was going to improve quickly.

If I had a nickel for every complaint about a tournament... This weekend was a bust because: Hawkeyes vs. Cyclones.Heavy rain forcasted.Mildly high pay-in.VC is known for paying out way too many people. Paying 2 of 3 GMs??! $120 for beating one person. Congrats. That $50 if you subtract pay-in.Paying 5 of 6 pros left standing? Again, $100 for beating one person. $20 difference in pay-in. I received $87 for besting 10 others. $32 difference, this time in merch. VC is a small business. Larger pay-in means more business. He is often trying to encourage everyone, especially small divisions, to come out and play, and win a little something. Which means you're not well rewarded for winning. IMO thats what player packs are for. There are things I like about his biz too. Results were up hours after both days. He made sure every course was looking its best. He runs Ice Bowls for charity. He tries to diversify his stacks with several companies. He has trophies. He is missing the social networking skills and organization like Chase is known for. It's a small business in big business territory. Kudos anyways. I know I didn't organize squat.

Thoughts from this weekend: There needs to be an appropriate punishment for ditching tournies because you sucked day 1. Injuries should be an exception. Emergencies should not.

Two things that pissed me off this year were an Ice Bowl in Grinnell and Cedar Rapids on the same day for no reason. That's just over an hour away. The other was I hit my first tournament ace this year, at the biggest tournament of the year in Iowa. Only 2 of 202 people hit aces. Was paid $44. I don't agree with division protected ace funds, or per-division ace finds. How are higher divisions protected from lower ones hitting aces? And a $3 ace fund is my ideal. Let's limit payouts to top 40%. No same day tournies within 2hrs. of each other. 10 players per division. Women and Pros get an exception (not divisions of each, just women from men, and pros from ams). Lump the closest divisions together if necessary.

The Donator wrote:Didnt they make some "888" rule for people that bitch out on a tournament like the one in IC this weekend?

yup - but my understanding of it is that it's for when you bitch out of a shitty round - like not holing out on the last hole so your crappy round doesn't affect your rating - a situation where a TD can make a judgement call based on the facts. If somebody calls you on a Sunday morning and tells you they twisted their ankle or something, whether it's bullshit or not, there's not a whole lot you can do about it as a TD, basically if you give them 888 you're calling them a liar.

At the Challenge, we split the ace funds by pool - not by division, due to pools playing different layouts and/or courses. How would you consider it fair to take ace money from two other pools Buzzkill, if you aced hole 1 at Walnut from the shorts and the other two pools played the long tee? IJS

I would be down for no age protected divisions at C-Tiers.

I think Steffen was onto something in the fb thread in that IA pros need to coordinate schedules better. I agree with Clue that while we agree there are too many events, we can't just say to vendors or TD's that you can only run certain events. We as players/consumers need to react to the market, coordinate schedules with an attempt to hash out what the best events are, and build bigger fields at those events that way and let the shitty events have whatever ams show up and not have to deal with much or any pro field. Eventually they'll get the picture and either get better, or go away.

Buzzz Killington wrote:The other was I hit my first tournament ace this year, at the biggest tournament of the year in Iowa. Only 2 of 202 people hit aces. Was paid $44. I don't agree with division protected ace funds, or per-division ace find.

I assume you're talking about LOD. Because INT and REC were only playing one day, their ace was split off as a separate ace fund, since they would have half as many chances as the PRO's and ADV players.

I'm sure Peyton can weigh in.

I started a thread last year about why do people come to events or not. From the limited responses, it seems that the number one factor was how the event date fit into other things going on in your life. This is where lots of events make it possible to play when it's convenient for the player (not the player having to structure their summer around disc golf). Something to look at: is total tournament attendance up or down? Are we getting more players to play by offering more events? I know that everyone would like to have 100 person turnouts every weekend, but that just isn't going to happen (even with fewer events). If we would increase the size of the player pool, perhaps we could get the numbers up.

he is talking about G&L Clothing Challenge where ace fund was included

Also, what is the actual problem with the amount of tournies? Just a reason to bitch, or is there a real problem that affects the average competitive golfer? I don't hear an TD's complaining about it not being worth their time.

I think it would be an interesting experiment to try and coordinate events among the Iowa pros. I'm thinking players might be conflicted whether their return on investment would be better attending the event where it looks like most will attend versus easier pickings at an event it appears fewer will attend. If you notice how the Prodigy team travels, they typically spread out and play different A & B tier events when there's not an NT or Major that weekend which likely produces higher net income for the team members. The better masters typically make this ROI calculation at every event determining whether their probability of cashing above a certain position in Open which may have added cash compares with a more likely win in Master.

diskey river wrote:he is talking about G&L Clothing Challenge where ace fund was included

that's what I figured, and why I responded.

diskey river wrote:Also, what is the actual problem with the amount of tournies? Just a reason to bitch, or is there a real problem that affects the average competitive golfer? I don't hear an TD's complaining about it not being worth their time.

There's not really a problem with the amount of tourneys. I don't think anybody is bitching, we're just talking about the state of affairs as it has changed significantly in the last 10 years or so - and not necessarily for the worse.

There's two sides to the arguement, and I get both of them. On the one hand, more events is great for some people like Matt Schlabach that play every week because they can, or like yourself - like you stated to get up to speed, so to speak. Lots of events also present opportunities (that we didn't have 10 years ago) for everyone to be able to play when they can, rather than have to revolve their other summer plans around one or two events each month.

On the other hand, we've seen some smaller field sizes, which in my opinion diminishes competition. Like I said in one of my comments on the facebook thread, I'm just a competition junkie, so I want there to be solid competition and a nice field in my division.

We can't really limit the number of tournaments. Just because people (like me) make the claim that there's too many, doesn't really mean we can't do anything about it. But as players/consumers, we can take back control of which events we play with the sole intention of having a bigger, better, deeper paying field. It just has to be a group effort.

It still comes down to supply and demand in the end. I personally think the tourney market is in a good place for where the sport is going. When I signed up in 2010 I received pdga #43714 and three and a half years later and we are over 61000. That's a 30% increase in less than four years. I'm sure that as we continue that the current offerings will gradually fill up and we will possibly need more events or bigger events to accommodate. What should be of concern is events that are declining in attendance and why it is occuring.